A French mayor who decided to set an example by lowering his own salary was forced to double it after being told the pay cut was illegal under a new law, reports the Telegraph.
After being elected in 2014, Stéphane Delpeyrat, a Socialist mayor of the sleepy south-western village of Saint-Aubin, announced to the 505 inhabitants that he would limit his monthly stipend to €400 (just over £300).
The salaries of village mayors in France, funded from local taxes, are intended to cover costs rather than providing an income.
Like dozens of other mayors, Mr Delpeyrat, 47, who is also a member of the Aquitaine Regional Council and an associate professor at the Bordeaux Institute of Political Studies, was willing to accept lower pay in order to use the money for local projects such as improving roads.
He also reduced the allowances of his four deputy mayors to €100 a month each. “The cuts allowed us to save a total of €10,000 a year out of a total budget of €300,000, which is not only symbolic.”
But he has now received a letter advising him that mayors of villages with fewer than 1,000 residents cannot be paid less than €800 a month under a new law that came into force at the beginning of this month. The government had hoped the move would encourage more people to get involved with local politics.
“It is grotesque,” Mr Delpeyrat told the Telegraph, adding that about 30 of the other 331 mayors in the Landes department had also been compelled to accept higher pay.